Instant Karma
by ivyclarice
Summary: Batman has something to tell the Joker...and it isn't pretty.
1. Instant Karma

**Author's Note**: I don't normally write Batman fanfic. I'm an X-Men girl, mostly, so if this seems off, I apologize. As the subject matter indicates, I'm working on an A/U sort of premise here, though readers shouldn't find it _too_ different from the traditional Batman they know and love. Besides, if I can get myself to actually go with the story further, it should all make more sense later. 

Miss Query appears with permission from her creator of the same name, who writes some of the best Riddler fics I've seen.

P.S. – I don't dislike Harley Quinn, though some people may see it that way.

**Disclaimer**: I'm not DC, I don't own Batman. I use him and other DC characters strictly for the purposes of my own amusement and earn no money from them. 

**Chapter One**

**Instant Karma**

Finding the Joker's hideout hadn't been easy. He'd had to push every underworld connection available and even then he'd almost not found the clown; and it was imperative that he did so quickly. Finally, it had all come down to Edward Nigma and a stroke of luck.  
  
The Riddler had escaped from Arkham about a week after the Joker and Harley Quinn. Oddly enough, Batman had no luck finding any of them. None of their regular hideouts had produced any leads; from FunniBone Shipping to the Crossword Laundromat, Gotham was not forthcoming.   
  
In the end, it was Nigma's love of good living that forced him out into the open.  
  
Like most of his criminal cohorts, the Riddler generally employed a group of thugs to make sure that certain menial tasks were carried out. These tasks ranged from cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping to robbery and assault. This time, however, it seemed that Nigma hadn't had the time or the cash flow to hire his normal round of muscle. Only the girl, Query, remained.   
  
When the Dark Knight had noticed the Riddler and his companion, they had both been out of costume and heading into the Gotham Borders store on 5th Avenue. Batman had barely recognized Nigma out of his costume, actually, though the girl was hard to forget.   
  
Seeing them, he figured, was luck at work.  
  
When the escapee emerged from the bookstore, he held a puzzle book in one hand and a large coffee cup in the other. The girl had a small plastic bag with a couple of paperbacks inside, and a large paper cup of her own.   
  
For a moment, Batman considered confronting the two and having it all done with, but he hesitated. Nigma and the Joker, while not on particularly agreeable terms with one another, would at least give each other the time of day, if it was mutually beneficial.   
  
The knowledge that this could be the break he needed led the vigilante to watching and following his quarry, rather than going the route of open confrontation. Perhaps Nigma would lead him to the two clowns. Time was growing short and he needed to find the Joker as soon as possible.   
  
Two days of patient surveillance had finally yielded Nigma and Dee Lemma taking a cab out to the abandoned Cross & Stern Shipyards.   
  
Batman followed and waited outside (what he suspected was) the Joker's hideout for about three hours before any life was detected from inside.  
  
The Dark Knight watched from the shadows as the Joker stepped out into the chilly night air, a grumble of thunder greeting him.  
  
The heavy door to the abandoned shipyard office screamed shut; its hinges caked with rust. The thick slam cut off the equally screamy voice of Harley Quinn, and Batman heard the Joker scrape a match against the brick building, then touch it to the tip of a cigarette, perhaps enjoying a moment of silence.  
  
It was now or never.  
  
The Dark Knight strode out of the shadows toward where the Joker was standing, not bothering to try and mask his presence. The green-haired man looked over at him and waved, emerald eyes glittering like stained glass.  
  
"Why, hello! How nice to see you, Batsy! To what do I owe the pleasure?"  
  
Batman made no reply. He continued forward until he was within a foot of the madman, then stood. For his part, the Joker seemed neither alarmed nor perturbed by the presence of the Bat. He smoked his cigarette and waited to see if Batman would say anything. He didn't, predictably enough, so he broke the silence himself.  
  
"I've been a good boy, dear. Why did you come to harass me?"  
  
"We need to talk."  
  
The Joker's eyes lit up and he pitched his cigarette away with a distracted flick.  
  
"I can't believe it! You're finally ready to confess your love!" He danced forward a few steps and made loud kissing noises at the other man. Another roll of thunder sounded off again, closer this time.  
  
Batman held his hand up to keep the Joker at arm's length. "No. This is serious."  
  
"Oh, please. It's always serious with you, guanohead." The Joker grumbled, moving back, then stooping to pick up his discarded cigarette. "What is it? Giving me a final request before dragging me back to the funny farm?"  
  
Batman paused a moment. He didn't know how to go about this, but he knew it had to be done. He settled for the direct approach.  
  
"Joker, your wife and son are real…and they're not dead."  
  
There was no mistaking the look of violent fury on the bone-white face. "That isn't funny, Batman." He growled, squinting against the smoke of his Pall Mall. "Not funny at all."   
  
"Joker…"  
  
"Go to hell! They burned to death in a fire…I think." A gleaming silver .45 automatic appeared in the clown's left hand with the ease of magician palming coins, and was leveled at Batman's heart. The cigarette had been pitched away again, this time fizzling out in a patch of dirt. "Don't play with me like this!" Joker hissed. "I'll see you dead before the night's over!"  
  
"Jack." Batman said softly, tone as comforting as he could manage. "Think. You know I don't 'play'."  
  
The gun flashed quickly. So quickly that Batman didn't have time to move as it crashed into his jaw. A light rain began to fall.  
  
"Don't call me that!" The Joker barked, teeth bared. "You don't call me 'Jack' and I won't call you 'Bruce', capisce?"  
  
There was no helping it. Bruce Wayne recoiled at the sound of his name, unable to hide his surprise. How long had the Joker known?  
  
"Oh, please." The green-haired man said. He actually sounded disgusted, Bruce thought. "How stupid do you think I am? I've had you figured out for years, Brucie…same height and build as the Bat, same baby blues, same boy scout chin, same arrogant swagger." He snarled out a patch of manic laughter. It sounded like the howl of a starving wolf to Bruce, who despite it all, could not help but pity the man. "Love that phone sex thing you do with your voice, though!" The clown praised, grinning like a skull. He absently wiped rainwater from his face with the back of a gloved hand.  
  
Bruce let him talk. Ultimately, the ruination of this man was his fault, and there was no denying it. In trying to save other lives, other families, he had shattered the Joker's life as easily as his own had been broken. In his heart, he sometimes thought that made him no better than the thug who'd pulled the trigger on his parents.

[To be continued]


	2. Rodin's, The Joker

**Chapter Two**

**Rodin's, "The Joker"**

  
  
Puzzled, the Joker blinked. Why was the world suddenly shimmering like water undulating in a fish bowl? Here he had the Bat at gunpoint, yet couldn't focus on him anymore. The shipyard was becoming a blur…  
  
"Puddin'! The Green Team is here!"  
  
The Joker began a clumsy lunge forward but halted, when he saw that he was in his tattered, purple easy chair, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. His Pagliacci painting was on the wall in front of him, reassuringly crooked as always, and a splatter of what was either old blood or chocolate sauce was still a few inches beneath it. Yes, this was definitely home, but…  
  
What was going on? Had he been hallucinating the whole Batman thing? Somehow, that seemed unlikely; the shipyard had seemed more real to him than his current surroundings now did. He could still smell the nitrates the lightning had left in the air and the acrid odor of the polluted ground being rained on. He ran an experimental hand through his hair to see if it was damp, but it wasn't. It was just its lush, boisterous self.  
  
Looking around the hideout, as if for confirmation that he was really awake, he struggled to remember what he'd been doing an hour ago. Hell, even 10 minutes ago would do. He could hear the hyenas in the other room, their chuckles low and conversational. The noise didn't bother him, though. It was a sound of normalcy, which helped clear his head a little.  
  
Closing his eyes, the clown took a deep breath and tried to shut out the clutter that was his psyche. Striving to correctly recall the events that transpired around him was always difficult work. More difficult than anyone knew. The Joker was a tactile, instinctive creature. Self-analysis had little appeal for him.  
  
His fall into the vat of chemicals so long ago should have killed him, but hadn't. It had mutated both his physical appearance and his body's chemical composition, and now he was crazy. Doctors debated whether his insanity was due to the emotional trauma of his accident, or a haywire reaction to his new body chemistry, but neither group had ever reached a satisfactory conclusion.   
  
Personally, the Joker suspected it was a combination of the two, though he didn't really care. He wouldn't trade his charming grin and enviable green locks for anything. Not even a sack full of Froot Loops.  
  
The 'emotional trauma' advocates had a harder time proving their case, as they lacked hard fact about what kind of man he'd been before his fall. He could've been equally as crazy before, and no one would've known. Therefore, it was difficult to state that the accident had made him insane.  
  
The 'chemical anomaly' advocates, on the other hand, had specifics to point at when presenting their case. They had discovered you could pump him full of anything from Paxil to Thorazine and not get a correctly anticipated response from him. This made sense, they pointed out, because all engineered drugs were constructed with normal human chemistry in mind. However, since the Joker didn't have a normal chemical make-up, the drugs couldn't be expected to behave properly in him. The result of this discovery had led them to try exotic (and even potentially lethal) combinations on him. Years of that kind of treatment hadn't really done much for his memory. Nor had the electroconvulsive therapy, for that matter.  
  
Pushing this tangent from his mind, he concentrated on trying to remember lighting the cigarette he'd awakened with. That suddenly seemed very important to him, though he had no idea why. At first, no recollections would come, save for those in his…what? Trip? Daydream? He remembered walking out the hideout door, and hearing the flap of the Bat's cape in the darkness…  
  
After a moment, though, he suddenly recalled flicking open his joker emblazoned Zippo and lighting up. However, this was bothersome. He was now putting out that same cigarette, unsmoked, and it was almost down to the filter. How long did that take to happen without any puffs? Five minutes maybe? Seven? Could he really have lost seven minutes of time and not realized it?  
  
Perhaps aliens had abducted him!  
  
"Hey, Puddin'!" Harley called again, startling him from his pondering. "Come say 'hi'!" Sighing, the Joker rose from his chair and rejected the alien idea. He didn't feel as though he'd been tested upon, nor did he have any memory of little green men. Besides, being held at space-ray point and forced to board a ship for an anal probe was just silly. He tittered at the notion.  
  
Abruptly, he decided that he would dismiss everything. All of it. From his Batman hallucination to his thoughts about Grays, he was done with it. Probably just some weird, isolated incident.  
  
He reached into his jacket pocket for another cigarette, hesitated, then declined to have one. He felt almost apprehensive of the things, suddenly. But that was silly, too. He was smoking Pall Malls, not weed. They'd had nothing to do with his psychotic episode.  
  
Muttering to himself, he wandered toward the sound of Harley greeting the Riddler and Query. It wouldn't be the first time he'd had such a freak out, he supposed, unconsciously slipping back to worry over his shipyard hallucination, and undoubtedly it wouldn't be the last; but it had certainly been a bizarre one.  
  
He had been Batman, and also himself. He'd seen through the Bat's eyes. And Guanohead had been very delicate around him. Thoughtful…kind, even.  
  
He shuddered and wondered what was wrong with him.  
  
That was sick!  



	3. The Monster Guide To Jokes & Riddles

**Chapter Three**

**The Monster Guide to Jokes & Riddles**

  
  
"Riddles!"  
  
Edward Nigma cringed at the Joker's diminutive of his alter ego, but managed to remain polite. "Hello, Jack." He said, subtly looking around for the cleanest dining room chair to sit on. "Q and I brought you and Harley a gift."  
  
The Joker looked expectantly over at Query, who was holding out what appeared to be a bottle of very upscale wine to Harley. Eddie had frowned when she'd selected it, intending to point out that they weren't that close to Joker and Harley, but Query had held up a hand, anticipating his objection.  
  
"Listen to me." She'd said. "I know you don't like spending this much on him, but it's more for Harley than it is him. Believe me, she needs it."   
  
Reflecting that he'd probably need it too, if he had to live with the Joker day in and day out, he'd diplomatically shut his mouth and bought the Weygandt-Metzler wine.  
  
"Oh! Look at it!" The Joker trumpeted, swiping the bottle from Harley just as she'd begun to read it aloud. "This is fancy stuff, Ed. You shouldn't have."  
  
Edward waved him off, found a bearable chair and swung it around to sit on it backwards, cowboy style. He needed a safe place to rest his hands, and the table wasn't it. The chair back was preferable. He shot his eyes over to Dee, who had settled into a chair of her own. She was watching the Joker very carefully. He was unpredictable and dangerous…to anyone. Even those he off and on chose to call 'friends', and she had no intention of letting her guard down around him.  
  
"To what do we owe this pleasure?" Joker asked, losing interest in the wine bottle and handing it back to Harley. Either unconsciously or intentionally, he mimicked Eddie and pulled one of the spare chairs around backwards.  
  
Eddie arched an eyebrow, as Harley leaned over and said in an audible whisper, "We invited 'em, Puddin'. Remember?"  
  
Joker did a double take and looked up at the girl in such frank surprise that it almost made Eddie laugh. Dee quickly shot him a look and he fell silent. She was right. It was a hard and fast rule that one only laughed with the Joker, not at him.  
  
He looked curiously at the Riddler, then at Query, then back at the Riddler. "Did I say what it was about?" He asked.  
  
They both shook their heads.  
  
"You didn't tell me either." Harley added, searching for a corkscrew to open the wine. "I know I'd remember."  
  
The Joker snorted derisively at her and reached for his cigarettes. "Damn." He muttered. "I wonder…"  
  
Eddie frowned slightly. Something was wrong here. Wrong with the Joker, at any rate. It wasn't that it was uncommon for him to forget things. Though he was exceptionally bright and perceptive, the man could also be absent-minded to a fault, and had the attention span of an ADD-stricken 5 year old. No, something else was wrong, but he couldn't put his finger on it; but maybe Q would know. Her base instincts were much sharper than his were. She could catch subtle changes in people that he often overlooked or overanalyzed.  
  
He glanced over at her again, trying to catch her gaze, but she was too involved in keeping an eye on the green-haired man to notice.  
  
"Harl," the Joker was blatting again fumbling with his Zippo, "do you have that silly thing open yet? We need booze!"  
  
"Almost, Mistah J! I hafta find some glasses, too!"  
  
The Joker turned back to face his two guests, grinning his huge and empty grin.  
  
"Well, since we're all together, how about a party game? Let's play 'Twister'!"  
  
Before either Query or the Riddler could refuse, he got up, set down the smoke and lighter, and began to stalk off to find the game.  
  
"He looks like he's drunk already." Query murmured over to Eddie. She sounded simultaneously amused and irritated, which made him smile. Smiling a little herself, she opened her mouth to make another comment, but stopped when she saw that Eddie's green eyes had suddenly gone wide. He had the almost blissful look on his face that he got when he solved a puzzle that had been stumping him. "What's wrong?" She asked, glancing after the Joker who was weaving a little as he walked, laughing to himself.  
  
"He's on drugs." Edward said. Whether it was to himself, to her, or both, she didn't know. "LSD, or something." He turned to Dee and leaned in toward her. "Did you see his pupils? They're mismatched…one is dilated and the other is perfectly normal. That happens to schizophrenics and psychotics during their episodes. We know he's neither, but LSD users also tend to have enlarged or mismatched pupils."  
  
Dee cocked her head, green own eyes skeptical. "Come on, Eddie. He's messed up for sure, but when have you even known him to drop a tab?"  
  
Defeated, Eddie sunk back into his chair a bit. "You're right." He said, then brightened again. "Maybe someone slipped him something!"  
  
"Who?" Dee scoffed. "Harley? She'd never do anything like that to him, unless it was a sedative. But I doubt she'd even go that far."  
  
"Well, _something_ is wrong with him." Eddie retorted. "Look at him…"  
  
"What is it that's wrong with me, Eddiekins?" The Joker asked from the opening of the kitchen/dining. His hands were on his hips and he was smiling, but it didn't take a genius to see that he wasn't happy about this line of conversation. The slight challenge in his tone had given that away.  
  
The Riddler turned around to look at the clown and debated whether or not to lie or tell the truth. The silence hung in the air like a heavy fog. Even irrepressible Harley, returning to the dining room with four Flintstones jelly glasses, had stopped in her tracks.  
  
Edward went with the truth.  
  
"You don't look well." He said at last. "Your eyes are glassy, one of your pupils is dilated, you're weaving when you walk, you're being clumsy with your hands…" He trailed off. The Joker looked at him expectantly, but Eddie shook his head. "That's all."  
  
"I just woke up about ten minutes ago." The Joker pointed out, sounding defensive. "I'm sorry if I'm not up to your cocktail party standards, Piddle-Pants."  
  
This last bit of name-calling did Query in. She stood up, grabbed the Nigma's wrist and said, "Come on. We're leaving."  
  
"What?" The Joker called, trailing after them. "But you can't! We didn't even get to play a game!"  
  
"Too bad." Query returned. "Be nice next time."  
  
They reached the door and the Joker watched with some apprehension as the girl flung it open with a vitriol that he didn't like. He noticed Eddie murmur something to her, and she stared at him a moment before releasing him.  
  
"Watch out for the stuffed shirt." The Riddler said, managing to make it sound ominous. Then he turned and went out into the drizzle. Query paused to look at Harley, then shrug, as if to say, _'Sorry. I don't what THAT was about.'_ Then she followed Edward outside, leaving a bewildered Harley and Joker to watch them go.  
  
Dee Lemma trotted a couple of steps to catch up with Edward, pushing a lock of red hair behind her ear.  
  
"What was that about, Tiger? Do you know what's going on?"  
  
"No." Nigma replied, getting into the driver's side of the BMW. "All I know is who did this to him. I don't know how or why."  
  
"What did that riddle about the stuffed shirt mean?" The girl asked, closing her own door.  
  
Eddie grinned at her, though it wasn't precisely a happy expression.  
  
"I'll tell you." And he did.  



End file.
